“I can’t run in these skirts, Grosbeak,” I said coolly. “Not while effectively carrying the Arrow.”
Carefully, I untied Grosbeak and turned his head to face away as he snickered.
“The virgin bride, undressing her husband for the first time.”
“I’ve seen him naked before,” I said acerbically. “I am no blushing bride.”
“Ah, but have you undressed him with your own hands?” He asked me as I quickly stripped my own things off. I left my small clothes on. The mirror would just have to leave them as they were.
I was a mess of blood and gore. It would have been nice to clean myself in the ever-warm pool, but with it gone, I would have to settle for fresh clothing. At least the worst of it was on my clothes, though it made for an awkward dance to undress while still remaining skin-to-skin with my husband.
“I’m his wife,” I told Grosbeak shortly. “His body is mine as much as his heart is, and I have just as much a right to tend it and care for it.”
“You miss my point quite intentionally, virgin Izolda.” Grosbeak chuckled grimly.
I found my cheeks growing hot as I began to strip my husband of clothing. It was awkward to undress him while keeping our bare flesh skin against skin but his clothing was ruined and torn. He needed better or he’d catch a chill. I laid a leg against the side of his torso as I wrestled his boots and trousers off. Even so, I was huffing with effort as I cast them aside.
There was no way to easily maintain this position while removing his shredded shirt and jacket. That would take great care to avoid injuring his ruined chest. There was only one way to manage it, and it was while straddling him. I felt grateful both that he was unconscious and could not see my disregard for his privacy over his health, and equally grateful that I’d had the foresight to turn Grosbeak around. I tried to keep my eyes to myself, and I mostly succeeded, but I could not keep them shut tight when, at last, I lifted him to carry him through the mirror.
He was beautiful in my arms despite his grisly wounds — the palms and side which never healed and the ragged tear I’d stitched together. Beautiful and far too pale. As blue as his holy color, as bloodless as a specter, as gloriously beautiful as a marble statue. I hoped I could find a way to breathe life back into his chest and keep his soul in this beautiful, ruined body.
I stumbled when an emotion returned to me — a deep, aching, sadness that swelled as the swell of the tide brings in the sea and washed over me with just as much kindness as the crashing waves of the vengeful ocean. And just like the hulls men sail out on the sea, so I was smashed to splinters beneath the rage of it.
I shook as I shifted him to my back as one would carry a large child, and bore him through the mirror, my spine straightening only in response to Grosbeak’s continued snickers. I would not give him the satisfaction of breaking now.
We emerged through the other side fully clothed and shod. I looked in the mirror and to my relief, Bluebeard was clothed from head to foot in his usual blue coat and shirt, trousers, and boots, but these were clean, warm, and dry, and his shirt and coat had been left unbuttoned. I, on the other hand, had been fitted in a backless jacket and shirt so that his bare torso was pressed directly to my back and a wide band of blue cloth had been slung under his bottom, around my waist, and then crossed over his back and down my shoulders to tie to itself, keeping him harnessed to me. My own feet were buckled into knee-high boots and my legs fitted with fine leather trousers, ready for trouble.
“Thank you, mirror,” I said and he winked but the wink was too much. The mirror cracked from side to side and the gargoyle above it froze in place, his mouth forever caught in a taunting twist.
“And now, Grosbeak,” I said with careful calm, “we will find your lantern pole and begin.”
“Begin what?” he huffed. “More dress up? More wasting time?”
“The beginning of the end,” I said.
CHAPTERTWO
In the main room,a lantern pole was hard to find now that I’d taken so many, but I did find a strange one with a hooked crook at the top like a shepherd’s staff. This one was shaped like the head of a hissing rooster — a creature both intimidating and somewhat ridiculous. It held two hooks for lanterns in tandem across a wide bar. I hung Grosbeak’s head from one of the hooks, ignoring his gnawed ear and the comb in his hair that a mermaid lover wove within the greasy dark tangles. I was used to his putrescence by now. Just one head hanging from the double tree made it swing so that the rooster stared off to the side as if to guard me against trouble on my right side.
“I do not care for this pole,” Grosbeak complained. “I am not feed for a wild cockerel. If you ever prove worthy enough to stop running for your life, I demand a better option. A gilded pole perhaps, or a plush cushion on which you shall bear me.”
“Do keep dreaming. I hear that hope keeps you looking young and you could use the help,” I said absently.
Bluebeard was positioned so that his head rested on my shoulder and almost, I thought I could feel his breath, faint, yet there, against the curve of my neck. I clung to that. We would find a way to retrieve him. Nothing was so lost that it could not be brought back. I had been assured that he was not yet fully dead, even if his heart had been given to the grave and while there was life, there was hope. If he’d had a plan to restore his wives, then we could have a plan to restore him.
“I hope you are not planning something foolhardy, mortal woman,” Grosbeak murmured as I lifted my candle and adjusted my grip on the pole. The candle barely lit further than his face and he was wreathed in the kind of shadows that heightened the otherworldliness of his visage. “If you chase after Death, my fun will be over.”
“I make all my plans with the sole aim of amusing you,” I said dryly, looking around Bluebeard’s home for anything else that could help us. I was finding nothing. When I touched most objects, they turned immediately to dust or ash.
It was a strange thing to walk with the limp body of my husband strapped to my back. The weight was so light I barely felt it, but I had to move with care to avoid hitting his limp limbs on the furniture or turning too swiftly and knocking his lolling head to one side. I was learning — however slowly — to move with slow care, as one might when tending an infant.
“If you wish to amuse me, then keep me alive. This dying house will not keep out the Hounds of Heaven now that they are loose in the Wittenhame, and you must run like all the rest, or form a hunting party to hunt the creatures back. There are only two paths in this game. And as you have no vassals except me, running is the only option for you. I’ll have you know that while I was the handiest in all the Wittenhame with arrow and spear, that option has been taken from me. It’s run or die today, my mortal conveyor.”
“Noted,” I said, but it was not toward the outer door that I strode, for I was not fleeing Hounds nor chasing specters. I had a clear plan in mind.
I crept through the darkened, dreary house, the scent of mildew in my lungs, and then made my way down the stairs, and heaved open the heavy oak door there.
“Not the Wall of Wisdom!” Grosbeak protested, but I ignored him. It was not his counsel I sought. He’d made it very plain that he was only along for the ride. “There’s nothing they can give you that I cannot! Nothing.”
